I hope this information will help you with your research. If possible, you should actually look at the original certificate--this is called primary research. A photocopy is almost as good, but often you will not get one if you do not ask for it. If you send to the Courthouse for a marriage certificate, in some places the information is printed or copied onto a completely different form. You are entitled to go to any Courthouse or repository and ask to see the originals. That is why they are called Public Records. Not every place will make photocopies, but the machines are so common now that if you ask for a photocopy, the clerk will generally make you one. I think the legal age was 21 from the beginning in 1885. That has always been the legal majority in the US. I think it was a carryover from Europe. I think it reflected the fact that parents wanted economic control over their children for as long as possible. Twenty one is a fairly old age in a time period when the average age was somewhere in the forties or so. Some of you may not know that in Europe, until Napoleon after 1800, the only marriages that were legal had to be performed by some sort of religious person. Napoleon started Civil Marriage as he was very anticlerical and practically eliminated religion in France, and then in the other areas where he had control. In America, a frontier country, there were few churches or "ministers of the gospel." [Many Catholic priests were emigrants from France that the French Revolution or Napoleon exiled.] Many people were not married by anyone, they made "professions" in front of the "elders" or followed some folk custom, like "hand fasting." Father Gallitzin, our local frontier priest, married people of many different religions. You took what was available. When laws were finally passed, all religious marriages [that conformed to the law] were legal. Pennsylvania tried to record vital statistics in 1850. The Legislature mandated them, and the existing counties started them. However, the Legislature did not pay for the records, so they were gradually abandoned. Some of the eastern counties kept up Collection longer than here in the west. Indiana County has quite a few of them. Cambria County doesn't have many--someone collected them in a small red pamphlet that was for sale. The historical society in Ebensburg has these printed copies, but I have never see the County originals. If you want these 1850 Records, you usually have to ask for them. The Records then contained slightly different data than in 1885, and included birth and death records. Only Marriage Records were collected in 1885, the government being concerned mainly about bigamy and child support. Birth and Death Records started in the Counties in 1893 and lasted till 1906 when the State took them over. Marriage [and divorce] Records are still in the Counties. I don't know about other states, but age 21 was state wide in PA from 1885. The early records were two pages, not one, and had a section for parental consent. The actual form itself changed, but still asked for most of the same data. Later the consent form was kept separate, but you can ask for them at the Old Jail Repository and they are available. I am not sure of the exact date that the age for parental consent was lowered to 18, but it was about/after the 1960s. I think it was part of the Federal Government changing the voting age to 18, but I don't know the details. Twenty one had been the legal majority which meant that anyone under 21 could not legally sign any contract, including marriage. If you wanted a loan, for example, you had to have a cosigner. The dept was not legal if you were not 21. When I graduated from college, the week before graduation everyone who had a Federal Loan had to go to the treasurer's office and sign a new loan paper. By that time most of us were 21. [This was 1959 for your information.] At some point after 1885 it was legal to fill out the marriage forms at the local JP or Squire, saving a trip to Ebensburg. The JP was responsible for taking the forms to Ebensburg. I think the Clerk there filled out the official forms, as many of them are not actually signed by the parties involved. The parties got a paper to take to the person who married them, and he had to return that form to the Courthouse himself. After 1885 no one could be legally married by anyone if they did not have that form. This is a way to find out if your ancestors were literate. If they signed their name, they were at least partially literate, but perhaps in another language. If they made "their mark," they were not literate in any language. If they used another language, the Clerk generally added "Signed in German" or whatever language. You must also remember that "reading" and "writing" were originally two separate skills, and most writing was done by professional clerks. More people could read than could write. Many emigrants' names were misspelled by the Clerks, but I noticed that the Priests from the Byzantine Rites [often referred to as the Greek Catholic Churches] would correct the spelling when they returned the signed marriage license. The County Clerks were mostly Welsh, and they did not know other languages, and spelled even English words as the Welsh did. Every "foreign" group had persons who were translators and would go to Court or other English speaking places with their countrymen. The marriage was NOT LEGAL if the form from the JP, Squire, Priest or "Minister of the Gospel," the wording on the forms, was not filled out and sent back to the Courthouse. You would not think this was a problem, but since marriages by religious priests or ministers were legal in Pennsylvania [and most of the US], anything could happen. I know for a fact that some of the local Northern Cambria Priests [especially St. Boniface and St. Lawrence] did not feel the government had any business "interfering" with a religious marriage, and simply did not fill out the license or send the form in to the County Courthouse. So many of our ancestors were not legally married. It really didn't matter so much, as they were validly [religiously] married and never knew about the missing information. If for some reason they needed a marriage certificate, they got one from the church. If they did find out or needed a legal marriage certificate from the Courthouse, all it took to make it legal was they had to get a certificate from the church and attach it to the license in the bound volumes in the Courthouse. I have gone through the marriage records, page by page, and there are a lot of missing forms from the person who "married" the couple and also many attached certificates. Also, some people often did "get a license," but did not actually get married for some reason. In my experience from reading the actual certificates, this often happened with emigrants. Most people then got married if they were going to co-habitat. Social and cultural pressure was too great to do anything else. If you have questions I can answer, I will. Most people who have not looked at the original records do not have much of an ideal of what they really look like or contain. A photo copy is good, but not perfect. A translation, especially when it is typed, is often misleading or lacks information available in the original. By its very nature, translation or copying, especially typing, will tend to make information "uniform" and while that is good, it also can be misleading and incomplete. [ I taught research methods in the age before computers, and It is different now.] Marilyn Kline Washington -----Original Message----- From: bobbyp2000 <[email protected]> To: PACAMBRI <[email protected]> Sent: Mon, Oct 10, 2011 9:30 am Subject: [PACAMBRI] Consent to marry This issue has also come up in our research of the Michael and Petronella opovich family.One of my uncle (Joseph) son of Michael and Petronella married n 1939. His wife was under 21 and needed parental permission. Several uestions. Was the law under 18 at one time and then changed to under 21? Was it lways under 21? At what jurisdiction level was this law set? State? County? omething else? When was this passed? Is it still in effect? Bob Poppy You anage things, you lead people. We went overboard on management and forgot about eadership. It might help if we ran the MBAs out of Washington. Rear Admiral race Murray Hopper (Mother COBOL) ___________________________________________________________ 7-Year-Old Mom Looks 25 om Reveals $5 Wrinkle Trick That Has Angered Doctors! ttp://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL3241/4e92f1de327acc49f7st01duc - - - - - - - - - Search for more Cambria County information on our webpage: ttp://www.camgenpa.com/ ------------------------------ o unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] ith the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of he message